Today marks the first of several posts which essentially make available to you portions of the Missional Discipleship Guide written by Mark Morris called Acts 1:8 Now. The intent is to provide fresh eyes and application for a local church, a small group, or an individual establishing a personal World Christian plan for missional living. The entire study will be available later for download on this site.

Acts 1:8 Now

Preface: Acts 1:8 Now

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8

There are at least six reasons that Christendom needs to take a fresh look at what has become a status quo, self-serving utilization of this familiar mission passage. Theologians and preachers work diligently to rightly divide the Word of Truth. Interestingly, we have a bad habit of taking this familiar passage and simply riding the wave of rhetoric, accepting a less than thorough examination of its meaning. Without praying over, studying, and exploring these well-used passages, missionaries, preachers, and writers alike have merely co-opted their predecessors’ conclusions. If the same level of scrutiny, prayer, and study were applied to Acts 1:8 as we apply to other less familiar passages, then Acts 1:8 Now would be unnecessary. Six reasons follow.

Acts 1:8 is commonly interpreted with an incorrect verb tense. (Was Jesus commanding His disciples to go and be His witness or was he prophetically stating an eternal reality? Is Jesus saying “GO!” or is He stating, “You will go.” What’s so important about the verb tense?)

Acts 1:8 is most often used to articulate a mission strategy of proximity which ignores historical and factual data. (Jesus’ home town was not Jerusalem, yet we apply this passage by advocating a strategy based on Jerusalem as my “hometown” mission field. We extrapolate from this passage that Jesus is commanding us to witness to “my Jerusalem” or my hometown and my family and friends. If that was Jesus’ message, why didn’t he say, “you will be my witness in Nazareth?”)

Acts 1:4 has been used to mandate a strategy of inaction. (Just wait. If God doesn’t call you to go, then you are only responsible for ministry in your hometown.)

The places of Acts 1:8 –Jerusalem, Judea & Samaria, and the ends of the earth– have been used almost exclusively to advocate a strategy of proximity without any thought to the more significant theological underpinnings. (What is the theological significance of the places of Acts 1:8? What is the theological significance of Jerusalem as a center of Truth and a hub of the dissemination of spiritual Truth? How does a theological view of Jerusalem affect the way we apply Acts 1:8 in contemporary missions?)

Contemporary Christians tend to view biblical place-references (Judea & Samaria) from a Western view of geo-political entities, i.e. nations. However, the biblical worldview is much more influenced by people-group thinking than by geography. (Dividing up mission organizations and mission strategies into local and global, near, far, and farther is organizationally helpful. Perhaps we should not focus as much on the places, rather on the peoples of Acts 1:8: their worldview, their ideology, and the status of their spiritual health.)

Theologically sound exegesis has been ignored for the sake of convenient rhetoric. We mean well, but familiarity with this passage has bred a casual approach to Acts 1:8. We are so ready to jump to Acts 1:8b that we pay no attention to Acts 1:8a. (How does the application change if we view the places mentioned in Acts 1:8 not as my places of mission activity, but as God’s arena of mission action?)

May God open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts and may He kindle fresh insights into local and global ministry. It is time to evaluate church missions activity, organizational missions priorities, and personal missions values through a new lens.

(More from Acts 1:8 Now in the next post)
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated are taken from the Holy Bible, NIV.